


Revelations

by Aurora_Sapientia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Klance Fluff Week 2017, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 06:58:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10508652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurora_Sapientia/pseuds/Aurora_Sapientia
Summary: Lance is loud. And conceited. And egotistic.Hasn't he always been?While searching for the missing blue paladin after falling through a black hole and into an alternate dimension, Keith stumbles across a human kid of all things, with deep blue eyes and tanned skin and a soft kind of warmth...





	

“Keith, what’s your status? Have you felt the Red Lion come back online yet?”

Keith grunts, slicing his bayard deep into the snarling coils of shrubbery before him.

“No. I’m still in this weird bush. I’m making my way towards his estimated location.”

“Good. Hunk and I had our hands full for a while here with those leech-bugs trying to suck our brains out. We made it back to the lions, but whatever you do, _don’t_ shoot a strange, unknown hive with a laser gun like _Hunk_.”

“Hey! I thought it was a bee hive! We could have had _honey_. Honey, Pidge! Honey!”

“Why would there be honey in an alternate dimension! And besides, what would you have done about the BEES?”

“Uh… befriended them with my irresistible kindness?” Keith can practically hear Pidge’s eye roll.

“Anyway. I’ve had enough of this dimension. I haven’t made contact with the Castle since we fell through the black hole, and my head feels fuzzy and I want to sleep. I wish Shiro was here. He’d know what to do.”

Keith’s chest clenches painfully at her words. He releases a slightly shaky breath, steeling himself once more.

“Hunk and I are going to work on finding a way out of here. Lance couldn’t have gotten too far – he only fell through a few minutes before us. I don’t know why we can’t contact him, but I’ll send you our location when you’ve found him. All good?”

“Yeah. I’ll find him and we can get out of this freaky place and go back to finding Shiro.” Keith clenches his teeth as he hacks at the vines snaking between the large, yellow trees. There’s something about the silence of this place that floods his blood with ice. The stillness seems to hum, cloaking the air with an eerie sense of familiarity, despite the extravagant bizarreness of the surroundings. Keith shivers.

He is lifting his bayard to bring it crashing through the foliage when he hears a distant noise. He freezes, straining his ears. A faint sobbing emanates from ahead of him. Heart hammering, Keith plunges forward, struggling through the overgrowth of branches and leaves that seem to claw at him hungrily. He lunges into a small clearing between two trees, and stops.

“ _What?”_ he whispers. Before him, a small child sits with his back to the trunk of a tree, his arms wrapped around his shins and his forehead resting on his knees. He is crying softly, his shoulders shuddering and hands trembling.

“What? What is it?” He can hear Pidge’s voice in his ear.

“It’s a… a kid,” Keith stammers. “A… _human_ kid.”

“ _What?”_ Pidge exclaims. The boy’s head shoots up. His cheeks are stained with glistening tear-tracks and his wide eyes are red. Terror is splattered across his features and his body stiffens.

“It’s ok!” Keith blurts out, bringing his hands in front of him in a display of non-aggression. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help.” Keith deactivates his bayard and the kid’s eyes seem to enlarge – his eyebrows leaping upwards. Keith takes a step forward.

The boy’s expression seems to toy between fear and confusion. Keith inches closer. The boy shrinks away slightly, but a glimmer of curiosity is in his eyes now. He gapes at Keith’s armour – eyes roaming over the red and white with awe. Slowly, carefully, Keith kneels beside him, and the boy buries his head in his knees once again. A smattering of scratches and bruises bespatters his tanned skin and his shivering arms are covered in goose bumps. The last time Keith spoke with a child was when he _was_ a child. He takes a deep breath.

“It’s ok,” he starts. The boy flinches almost unnoticeably at his voice. “It’s ok now. I’m Keith. I’m a paladin of Voltron. I’ll protect you.” The boy lifts his head slowly. His large eyes swim with both wonder and unease, but the intrigue in his face seems guarded by a quiet reservation. But the hands wrapped around his bony arms loosen their grip as Keith offers a smile.

What is this child doing here? It shouldn’t be possible that a human couldreach this plane of reality at all, let alone a kid. The paladins had fallen through a black hole to get here, so how was it that this boy had come to be here, in another dimension?

The boy is no longer crying now. He stares at Keith, his expression unchanging, his mouth ajar. What can Keith do? He can’t leave him, this inexplicable child in the middle of a deathly still forest.

“Uh, are you ok? What happened?” The boy glances at his feet, lowering his head bashfully. He mutters something inaudibly low. Keith frowns. “What?”

The boy looks up shyly. “I’m lost,” he utters, his voice a whimper. Keith nods.

“Ok. Are you with someone? Your parents? A sibling?” The boy’s eyebrows furrow in a soft, almost dazed confusion. He looks at Keith as though grappling for some thought or recollection. Keith tries again. “Are you looking for someone?” The boy’s eyes flicker and he nods once. “Alright,” Keith says. “I’m looking for my friend, too. Why don’t why go looking together?”

The boy nods eagerly. Keith smiles. He thinks the child seems glad to no longer be alone. Keith begins to rise slowly, looking to the boy with what he hopes is an encouraging expectancy for him to follow. But the boy glances at his feet again, his face falling slightly. It’s then that Keith realizes that his feet are bare.

“Where are your shoes?” He asks. The boy frowns, mouth opening and shutting again. He shakes his head.

“You don’t have any?”

Another shake of the head.

“I cut my f-feet,” the boy says in a small voice. Keith glances at the kid’s feet, and sure enough, light gashes run in red lines across the brown of his skin. The twigs and branches smothering the forest floor must have sliced open the child’s feet as he was walking. Keith wonders again how the kid ended up wandering this tangle of vines and leaves. He kneels again to inspect the injured feet.

“There are no serious cuts, you should be fine. But if they hurt, I could… uh… I could carry you on my back?”

The boy’s eyes brighten softly. “A piggy-back ride?”

Keith smiles. “Sure.”

He grips the kid’s arm to help him rise, his legs still slightly wobbly. He is much taller than Keith had realized. Crouched and huddled beside the tree he had seemed so small, but his limbs are lankily long and the top of his head is around Keith’s elbow. Close enough to see the soft traces of youth in his face, Keith can tell the kid must be tall for his age.

Keith leans down on one knee for the boy to climb onto his back. Skinny legs scramble to wrap themselves around Keith’s middle and arms snake their way around his neck. The kid is nothing but skin and bone, but he is heavier than he looks. Keith suppresses a groan hoisting himself onto two feet. He grips loosely the boy’s legs and begins trudging through the thicket. The boy lets his limbs hang almost limply.

**

 

… “And I have Chewie, a – and R2D-d-d-d 2, and, and… I’ve got Han Solo, and CP3O, and L-l-l-l-leia, but I never got Obi-W-w-wa, w-wan,” Keith can feel the boy nod to himself as his hair brushes Keith’s own.

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. He’s really rare. I could, um, never find him. But h-he’s my favourite. So it SUCKED!” Keith laughs loudly at the sudden outburst. He stops walking to jump slightly, sending the boy bouncing higher up his back, earning a string of giggles that bubbles from the boy’s belly like popping candy as he clutches at Keith’s arms to steady himself. Keith continues forward, grinning to himself. He sees the boy’s arms flail around like an uncoordinated orchestral conductor in his peripheral. It had taken some prompting on Keith’s behalf for the boy to emerge from his withdrawn timidity. For the first hour, they had traipsed along in near silence, interrupted only by swinging of Keith’s bayard and the occasional fidget from the body slung on his back. After some time, Keith had tried to ask him where he came from, how he left Earth, how long he has been here for, but he was met with only quiet.

But he had been patient. He learned the right questions to ask, and the right comments to make which wouldn’t send the boy reeling back into reticence. He coaxed the boy’s words from his mouth like drops of water from a tightly closed tap, and they soon became a gushing river. There was something about the carefully earned nature of their conversation that felt like a quiet, important kind of intimacy.

Keith steps over a fallen branch and feels the boy’s grip around him tighten, but the merry chattering continues uninterrupted.

“But I’ve, um, I’ve got other pop vinyls too. I got… um. Captain America! Yeah. And um, H-h-harry, and Hermione, and S-s-s-s-stitch, and Regina George.”

“Regina George?” Keith splutters.

“Yeah,” the kid sighs contentedly.

“You’ve seen that movie?” Keith feels him perk up.

“Yeah! My sister sh-showed me. She painted my nails wh-while we watched. I laughed soooo hard, like ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” With each ‘ha’ he bellows, he throws his head forward dramatically and his body bounces on Keith’s back. Keith chuckles, shaking his head. The boy swings his dangling legs rhythmically.

“But it’s not my _favourite_ movie. Th-th-tha, th-that’s E.T.” he nods, then, “NO!” His legs kick upwards suddenly. “WALL-E. It’s WALL-E. No, no, no, no! It’s… wait… wait. It’s P-pirates of the Ca-C-C-Caribbean.” He’s silent for a moment. “No. No, it’s The Notebook.”

The trees have thinned now – the webbing networks of vines passed – or rather cut through. The grass is all but clear save for fallen leaves and twigs. Keith looks over his shoulder.

“How are your feet feeling?”

“Better now!” The boy wriggles his toes in demonstration.

“Do you want to walk?”

“Aww,” the kid whines, but he slips from his makeshift seat as soon as Keith kneels. On the ground, he stretches his arms upwards, extending his back on tiptoes. He then dashes in front of Keith, galloping ahead. “Come on, slow poke!”

Keith raises his eyebrows at him. The boy chortles. He stops and picks up a stick half his body length. He turns and brandishes it at Keith proudly, beaming. Keith smiles at the goofy grin.  

They walk for a while, the boy just in front of Keith, using the branch as a hiking stick. With each step the boy takes he springs forward, prattling constantly about every thought to enter his mind, it seems to Keith.

Yup. Every thought. Every single one.

If the kid wasn’t so charming, he’d be damn annoying. But there is something remarkably warm about this boy with his endless babble and his eyes that become stars when he smiles. He is guarded – like a shy, hushed energy. But he is loud and almost perpetually excited, and there is something about his aura that feels inherently kind.

“I – I’m gunna do some exploring, like an explorer. Like…” He gasps suddenly, dropping the stick and bending to grasp a lifeless vine on the forest floor. “Like Indiana Jones!” He thrashes the vine, making a whistling sound to imitate the cracking of a whip.

Keith shakes his head. It doesn’t sound like a whip at all.

“I’m gonna be like in that m-m-m-movie, and I’ll be Indie, and I-I’m an explorer! Me and – hey, what’s your name again?”

“Keith,” Keith deadpans.

“Keith. I’ll be Indiana Jones, and you’ll be…” His voice trails off as he frowns slightly. “Y-you’ll just be Keith.”

“Keith? Status? How’s the kid?” Hunk’s voice fills Keith’s ears.

“We’re fine. Still looking for Lance – there’s been no sign of him.”

“Should we be worried?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think about this place. But he can’t have gotten too much further.”

“Alright, you keep looking,” Pidge pipes up. “So how are you handling babysitting?”

“It’s fine, actually,” Keith says, watching the boy jump onto a fallen log and whack his ‘whip’ at imaginary enemies in a flurry of skinny arms. He grins crookedly, flashing his gapped teeth, half of which are missing. “He’s kind of cute.”

“What? Emo Keith is enjoying spending time with children?” Keith _hears_ Pidge’s smirk.

“Whatever,” Keith mutters, but he’s smiling. 

“Keith,” Hunk says slowly. “What are we gonna do with him when we leave?”

Keith sighs. “I don’t know. We can’t leave him here. We’ll have to find him a way home.”

“Yeah… Lucky kid. I bet the first thing he eats when he gets back will be doughnuts, or, or cupcakes, or -”

“Hunk, stop torturing yourself!” Comes Pidge’s voice.

“Right.”

“We need to get out of here. We’ve wasted enough time already. Shiro needs us,” Keith asserts, stepping over an overgrown tree root. “You guys just find us a way out of here and the kid and I will find Lance.”

“Alright, Keith. We’ll do that. You keep that kid safe,” Hunk says.

“Will do,” Keith smirks, watching the boy whipping the trunk of a tree in the same spot over and over again. He turns to Keith suddenly.

“Hey, you r-r-re-remember that part in the movie, w-when that guy is all chained up, but then the evil guy like, reaches into his chest, past his skin,” the kid demonstrates, placing his clawed hand on his own chest, “and y-y-yanks out his heart? And then they put him in the f-fire pit? And he’s like screaming? And the heart bursts into flames in the evil guy’s hand?”

“No,” Keith says, slightly concerned.

“I hate that part,” the boy visibly shivers. “It’s gross.

“Ok...” Keith is now more than a little disturbed at the age appropriateness of the movies this kid is watching.

“But I like the part with the alligators. Because then, it’s th-the bad guys ge – g-getting all eaten up, so it’s ok. And also – I know that if _I_ was ever gonna get eaten by an a–alli–alligator, the mermaids would save me.” The boy nods gravely.

Keith nearly snorts. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. They s-s-save people all the time. My mama told me, when she was little, a mermaid saved her from drowning in the ocean.”

“Is that so?” Keith smirks.

“Yeah. Well, she said she _thought_ it was a mermaid, but then wh-when she was on the land, she saw it was a lifeguard.” The kid scratches his head. “I always forget that part. But –”

The boy’s voice is cut short, plummeting into a scream as the ground beneath him crumbles. Keith tumbles to the ground as the earth begins to tremble violently – the tree leaves rustling vigorously as the thick trunks shake like rattle sticks. An ear-splitting, thundering noise drowns the boy’s screams as the ground beneath them seems to shift like a mountain of rocks in a landslide. The grass begins to pull apart, creating a gash in the ground growing wider and deeper. Whole trees become unearthed and plunge into the crater, the vines tangled between branches snapping and slithering into the pit.

Keith throws his gaze up, and every organ of his anatomy seizes. The boy drops as the ground beneath him falls away. His scrawny arms claw at the grass as his body slips with the river of dirt downwards into the split in the ground. With a shout, Keith lunges forward, ignoring the tremors that shoot up his legs with each step that touches the quivering ground.

He stumbles forward, leaping over logs and swerving around the falling trees dropping like bowling pins. The boy’s eyes are bulging with a frantic fear as his flailing arms cannot find a grip on the crumbling ground. His cries sear in Keith’s mind as the boy’s body slips dangerously downward.

Keith dives, grabbing the boy’s wrist just as his feet slide free off the slope. The boy’s body dangles as Keith brings his other hand forward to grip the skinny arm. The swinging boy screams, his free arm clutching at the shoulder of his extended arm. Absently Keith worries about dislocation, until he feels the ground beneath him begin to give. Swinging his legs around, Keith digs his feet into the dirt as far as he can. He heaves, hauling the boy upward so that his stomach is flat against the edge of the overhang. Keith scrambles to find his footing as the earth falls away beneath them. The boy looks up at him, his widened eyes brimming with tears.

“IT’S OK, ALRIGHT?” Keith shouts over the rumble of the shaking ground. “YOU’RE ALRIGHT.”

With a grunt, Keith tugs on the boy’s arm and drags him upward until his whole body is sprawled upon the rapidly eroding ground. Without releasing his grip on the boy’s wrist, Keith heaves himself to his feet and scoops the boy’s trembling body into his arms before breaking into a sprint.

He surges through the forest, ploughing through the shrubbery shoulder first, his body curved around the boy cradled to his chest. Finally, with what sounds like sigh, the aching ground abruptly falls still and silent once more. Keith’s footsteps pad to a halt. He heaves, his lungs burning, bending forward slightly. He looks down at the boy, who peers back up at him with wide eyes, his head tucked between Keith’s bicep and chest. Keith grins at him in between pants. Gently, he lowers the boy to the ground.

“Are you alright? How’s your arm?” Keith bends and plants his hands on his knees.

The boy moves his shoulder in careful circles, eyes flicking to the side in concentration.

“Good.”

“Can you walk?”

The boy nods definitively. “What happened?”

Keith shakes his head, his breaths still huffing slightly. He rises to stand up straight. “I think the ground… split.”

“An earthquake?” The boy asks quizzically.

“Sort of, but it was… too big.”

“Keith? You alright? Did you guys feel that?” Hunk’s voice yells in his ear.

“We felt it alright. Any idea what it was?”

“We watched it happen from the Lions. It’s like… the earth just _moved._ Like it split into different parts and connected itself to new pieces of land. Like one side of the land just picked up its bags one morning with a ‘honey I’ll be home after work’ and just bolted to run away with the sexy intern. And then the other side was like, ‘fine, two can play at this game’ and stole their neighbour’s husband. And then –”

“Alright, Hunk,” Pidge interjects. “What I _think_ Hunk means is that the whole land just appeared to sort of… divide itself into huge sections and then reattach to other pieces of earth, seemingly without causation.”

“It’s changing itself,” Keith almost whispers.

“It’s like this place is possessed, or haunted. Do – do you think an entire land can be haunted? Is – is that a thing? That is deeply terrifying.” Hunk’s voice quivers.

Keith shakes his head, an icy fear trickling into his heart. “We have to find Lance. We don’t know where he was during the earthquakes. He could be in one of the splits or crushed between two pieces of land for all we know.” An urgency grips his voice now.

“Agreed. Pidge and I are looking for him from the sky right now. Keith… please hurry.”

“Roger that,” Keith says, turning to the boy. “We have to move.”

 

**

 

The boy picks up on Keith’s newfound urgency easily. His steps become strides to match Keith’s swift pace, however he occasionally breaks into a slight jog to keep up. His chattering is littered with huffing breaths and coughs, and he wipes the back of his hand across his forehead every so often. But he does not complain, or show any signs of wanting to stop.

It is strange, Keith thinks, that they have only known each other for a few hours, and yet he seems to have this blooming pride for the little boy tottering along beside him. Keith had found him alone, barefooted and terrified, in the middle of this vast and unknown place. There was something in the light weight of the boy’s presence that told Keith he was shy, and yet he had emerged from his fear and his quiet reservations to release his thoughts and laughter. The shock of almost slipping into a hole in the earth could have sent him plunging back into his shell, but the boy beside Keith was as vibrant now as he had been before. Keith wonders what he will make of Lance. Lance, who is loud and boastful and turbulent. Would the presence of someone new unsettle the child?

But somehow Keith knows that Lance will be good with the kid, that he will adapt to every hesitation and read every subtle sign. He’ll bend down to talk to the boy so that their eyes are levelled, and he’ll create some sort of ridiculous inside joke between them that they’ll bond over irrevocably. Keith thinks the boy will like Lance, despite his timidity. They have the same kind of warmth. Keith imagines Lance hoisting the giggling boy onto his shoulders, if he is physically able and not injured. Something in Keith’s stomach churns and his chest tightens. They need to find Lance soon. The thought of him alone in this place… Keith shakes his head forcefully. He’ll find him. He has to.

The boy is in front of Keith now, pushing aside ferns and leaves as they make their way through a particularly thick part of the forest. Suddenly the kid stops and lifts his arm to point ahead.

“Blue.”

Keith steps forward, yanking at the shrubbery in front of his face. Before them, a few yards away, is the Blue Lion. Relief surges through Keith’s veins. The Lion is lying motionless in the centre of a valley. Trickles of steam ooze from her metal in places, and she appears to have a few more dents than Keith remembers her having, but she doesn’t seem to be in a particularly bad condition.

“That’s right,” Keith smiles. “It _is_ a blue lion.”

They begin the descent towards the Lion, Keith purposefully positioning himself in front of the boy as they make their way down the slope. It seems that the Lion is further away than Keith had originally thought, as the trek seems to be taking much more time than he had anticipated. It is almost insufferable, being so close and yet not quite there. Keith would have run, but he did not want to leave the boy wandering after him. But as they draw nearer, Keith loses his patience and shouts for the boy to follow as he runs to the Blue Lion’s head.

“Lance!” He calls. Silence. Keith groans, growing steadily more agitated by the second. “Blue, let me in. Please.”

Blue’s mouth opens slowly and Keith glances over his shoulder at the boy standing next to him ogling at the mechanical beast. He looks at Keith, who gestures at Blue’s widened mouth before surging inside. He sprints to the cockpit, his heart hammering at the sight of the tip of a blue helmet peeking over the top of the pilot’s seat.

“Lance!” Lance’s body is slumped, unmoving, his eyes closed. Keith crouches beside him. “Lance! Lance, answer me!” Keith shakes him by his shoulders, his body flopping unresponsively.

The boy approaches the cock pit and stands beside the pilot seat. His gaze travels over the controls lingeringly, a low breath escaping his lips. He turns to face Lance, his jaw slack and his eyes wide. He stretches his arm toward the motionless paladin, his hand reaching to touch his fingers to Lance’s face.

“Wha –” Keith begins, before a blinding light pierces the room, seemingly emanating from the boy’s fingertips resting on Lance’s cheek. Keith cries out, throwing an arm over his eyes and reeling back. The flash fades, as quickly as it appeared, and Keith removes his arm.

The boy is gone.

Keith frowns. “What? Where –”

Lance’s eyes slowly open. He blinks groggily, taking in his surroundings. His eyes fall on Keith’s dumbstruck face.

“What are you looking at?” Lance mumbles.

Keith opens his mouth, and closes it again.

“What just happened?”

“Uh, why are you asking me? The one who only just woke up? Last thing I remember… was falling through that black hole.” Lance looks out at the forest outside. “Where are we? I feel like I just woke up from a really, really long nap.

Keith looks around, searching for the boy. “What happened to the kid?”

“What kid?” Lance takes off his helmet.

“The kid –” Keith stops, his body stiffening. “He disappeared after touching you.”

Lance rubs his forehead. “Huh?”

“He – he… It was YOU!”

“What are you talking about?”

“There was a boy, I found him alone in the forest when I was looking for you. Then he touched your cheek, and disappeared in a flash and now suddenly you’re awake again.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “Keith, buddy, are you sure you didn’t hit your head in a rough landing or something?”

“No!” Keith yells. “He was here… _You_ were here. But you were younger… a lot younger.”

Keith hadn’t thought it feasible, but Lance’s eyebrow arches even higher. “You _know_ you sound insane, right?”

Keith bristles. “No, it’s true! Pidge and Hunk can… Pidge and Hunk!” Keith quickly switches on his communicator. “Guys. I’ve got him.”

His helmet suddenly fills with cheers. “Where are you? Is he alright?” Hunk’s voice is tight with worry.

“Yeah,” Keith smirks at the paladin stretching his long limbs in the pilot seat. “He’s alright. And I’ve got one hell of a story.”

 

**

 

“It was LANCE?” Both Pidge and Hunk exclaim simultaneously, lurching forward in their seats. Back at the Castle, the paladins are lounging in their chairs around the dining table after a long discussion about a lead on Shiro’s whereabouts, waiting for Coran to emerge from the kitchen with their dinner.

Keith snickers, leaning back in his seat. “Yup. The whole time.”

Pidge shoves her glasses further up her nose. “How do you know?”

Keith sits forward. “I didn’t. Not until we reached Lance, and the kid… I mean… young Lance touched the older Lance’s cheek, and then this flashing light blinded me for a moment, and then the kid was gone and Lance was awake.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, Kei –”

“Actually,” Pidge cuts Lance off, “Something like that would make sense. We all sort of entered the black hole at the same time, but Lance went through first. It’s possible that the alternate dimension we were in was different for us and Lance, and that the time warped and affected Lance differently – like a crease in time created by the speed and position of an object colliding with a distorted reality. It’s a viable notion that Lance’s body was rendered immobile while the alternative consistency of time in the dimension materialized one of Lance’s prior states, with the thoughts and memories Lance had at whatever age he was.” Pidge shrugs at the three dangling jaws gaping at her.

Hunk shakes his head. “Nah, man. I think that place was just haunted. Didn’t you _feel_ how super creepy it was? And how about the fact that the whole place had like a _mind of its own_ and could _tear itself apart?_ Nope. Nuh uh, this was all just that place playing a big ole prank on us.”

Pidge snorts.

“So… It really was me? As a… kid?” Lance is met with a chorus of nods. “Freaky.” He shivers.

“Yeah man. I only wish I had’ve been there to see it. I bet you were super scrawny,” Hunk laughs.

Lance shifts his gaze over to Keith.

“How long were you just... hanging out with kid me?”

Keith shrugs. “A few hours?”

Lance brings his elbows onto the table with a thud, his hands gesturing madly. “And you didn’t _recognise_ me? Dude, not remembering my name is one thing, which I still haven’t forgiven you for, by the way. But we’ve all been in space together for, how long? And you didn’t even recognise my face? It’s a pretty memorable face!” Lance points at his pouting features.

“I don’t know. You were… so _different._ It didn’t even cross my mind that it could be you. You were all… shy.”

“WHAT? I wasn’t… I was never…” Lance sits back into his seat slightly, scratching the back of his neck bashfully. “I was kind of shy.”

“ _What_?” Pidge bursts out laughing. “Lance? Shy? Why couldn’t I have known him back THEN?”

Lance crosses his arms and glowers as Pidge wipes away tears of laughter.

“So what? A lot of kids are shy when they’re young. Just be thankful I’m the way I am today,” Lance says, running a hand through his hair with a mock smugness.

“You had a stutter, too,” Keith says, grinning nefariously. Lance’s draw drops clean open.

“Awwww, I didn’t know you had a stutter! That’s adorable!” Hunk coos, tugging at Lance’s jacket.

“Hunk, get off!” Lance swats at Hunk’s hands. “And it’s not adorable! It’s a legitimate speech impediment that took me years to get over, thank you very much.” Keith feels a stab of guilt, remembering the way Lance had struggled to say the words that were clearly on the tip of his tongue, longing to overflow with the rest of his speech.

“Still adorable,” Hunk chuckles, poking Lance’s cheek with his finger. 

“Whatever,” Pidge declares. “Moral of the story is, Lance spent a day out cold with his former child-self roaming around the wilderness, and Keith spent a day babysitting little Lance with no objection whatsoever, because he was, in Keith’s own words, _cute_.”

Keith splutters and chokes on his own air, fixing Pidge with a deathly glare. Pidge shrugs mischievously with a smirk reminiscent of Satan himself.

“ _What?”_ Lance’s hands slam onto the table as he turns to Keith, an incredulous grin unfurling across his face. “You think I was _cute?”_

“Yup. He was all happy and smiley all day and he said you were cute, and that he was enjoying spending time with you,” Pidge smiles as she tilts her head upwards gleefully.

“Ok, that’s not what I said –”

“You think I was cute!” Lance exclaims, laughing, pointing at Keith’s scowling face. “You made fun of me for being shy and for my stutter but _you_ think that I was cute!”

“Alright, I didn’t –”

“No, nope, you’re not getting out of this now. You totally loved little kid me and thought that I was the most adorable thing you’d ever seen!” Lance swivels in his chair and cups his hands around his mouth. “Hey, Coran!”

After a few ticks, Coran’s head pops out from behind the doorframe.

“What?”

“Keith just spent the day today fawning over kid-me and gushing about how cute I was!”

Coran’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “Really? He did? That’s surprising!”

“On the contraire. You see, Keith here is just _so_ susceptible to my charming nature, he couldn’t help but find everything little-me did endearing,” Lance tattles, stroking his chin smugly. “Man, wait till I tell Shiro!”

With the solemnity and the sincerity of the Grim Reaper, Keith turns to Pidge and mouths “ _I. Hate. You.”_

Pidge beams brightly at him.

 

**

 

Finally, Coran emerges from the kitchen to fill the table with plates of green goo and other strangely coloured delicacies. Keith sits and eats and scowls at Lance beside him every once in a while for good measure. He hadn’t thought it possible, but Lance is smugger now than he has ever been before. He sits, head cocked to the side, a sleazily crooked smile and an arrogant arch in his eyebrows plastered on his face. Lounging in his seat haughtily, Lance flicks pieces of food onto his fork and brings them to his mouth pretentiously slow, eyes fluttering closed with each bite as though he was a fine-dining royal.

Keith glowers.

With a final eye roll in Lance’s direction, Pidge leaves with Coran to work on modifying the Castle’s sound system.

“Oh, bye Pidge!” Lance calls, extending his arm in the air and wriggling his fingers. “Try not to miss me too much! Because you know Keith will do that for you!”

Keith snorts.

Lance turns to Keith, his grin unwavering. “Are you saying you _won’t_ miss me?” He pouts, bottom lip sticking out. “But I’m so cute!”

“Ok. That’s enough.”

“You said so yourself!”

“I’m… just gonna go to bed now.” Hunk jumps out of his seat, forcing a yawn. “So tired. Bye!” He dashes out of the room.

“I didn’t know it was you!” Keith raises his arms in a shrugging gesture.

“Nope! Doesn’t change anything!” Lance points at the space in between Keith’s eyes, grinning.

“But it doesn’t count because you were so… so… nothing like yourself!”

“Oh come oooon,” Lance sits back in his chair, folding his arms. “I wouldn’t have been _that_ different.”

“Yes, you were!” Keith cries, turning his body to the side to face Lance. “You were like a whole other person! Your… presence was… you were just different. You must have changed a _lot_ if that was really you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’ve just been reading me wrong.”

Keith snorts again. “Not possible.”

“Oh really? Well, joke’s on you, because I actually _haven’t_ changed that much. I just got… well, louder, and stopped being so shy, and ditched the haircut…”

Keith looks disbelieving, but Lance’s eyes are wide with sincerity and he’s leaning forward intently.

“Well,” Keith mutters, “One thing was definitely different.”

“Oh? And what would that be?”

Keith lifts his gaze to meet Lance’s. “You actually liked me.”

Lance opens his mouth, and freezes. He takes a breath as though about to speak, but cuts himself short. He stares, eyes wide.

“You,” Lance croaks, and coughs quickly before speaking again. “You, uh, you think I don’t like you?”

Keith blinks. “Well yeah, Lance. You’ve kind of made it obvious.” When Lance continues to stare at him blankly, Keith frowns. “You acted like you and I having a bonding moment was the worst thing in the world, you blatantly say, often, that you prefer opposing me than being on my side, and you are always purposefully trying to get on my nerves.”

Lance nods pensively. “I _do_ do all of that.”

Keith raises his eyebrows.

“But what about all that stuff out in battle? Why do you think I’m covering your reckless butt all the time? Huh?”

Keith falters, speechless for a moment. Then he shrugs. “I just thought all that stuff never translated into real life for you. I thought you were only doing it for the team.” Keith averts his gaze involuntarily. “Besides, remember that time you said you hated me?”

Lance gapes. “What? When did I say that?”

Keith arches an eyebrow at him. “When you literally said ‘I actually don’t hate you right now’ implying that most of the time, you do, in fact, hate me.”

Lance’s brow creases. “Wow, wow, wow. That was _ages_ ago. And I didn’t mean for you to, you know, take me seriously. No one takes me seriously! That’s the whole point!” Lance glances at his hand resting on the table. “I actually think, that, you know, you’re…”

Keith leans in. “What?”

“You know.”

Keith frowns and shakes his head.

Lance groans. “Please don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?”

Lance closes his eyes for a moment, sighing.

“Lance, come on.”

Lance’s eyes fly open. “Cool, OK! I always thought you were cool.”

Keith reels back, stunned. “Why?”

“Wh –” Lance splutters. “What do you mean why? You know you’re cool. That’s why you’re always sulking around like you’re too good to talk to anyone, and wearing those stupid gloves that don’t actually _do_ anything but look good, and going off on your own to do cool stuff because you know that you can do it by yourself. I thought _you_ didn’t like _me_! You didn’t even _remember_ me from the Garrison and then you acted like I was like imposing on your life or something. Like I was useless and you didn’t want me there.”

Keith’s mouth hangs open. Lance glances around the room anxiously, trying to appear self-assured.

After a moment of silence, during which Keith stares fixedly at the wall with his mouth tightly shut and Lance gazes down at his hands fidgeting in his lap, Keith licks his lips.

“Lance,” he starts. “I don’t not like you.” Lance’s head jerks upwards as he peers at Keith curiously.

“You don’t?”

“No,” Keith says with a frown. “And I don’t think you’re useless. I never felt like that.” Keith glances to the floor, rubbing his arm absently.

“Oh,” Lance utters. “Well I – uh, I never hated you.” He scratches his arm. “Like ever. I say a lot of stuff, but I never meant that. I always just thought that you must know how good you are at everything and it made me… kinda angry?”

“You mean jealous?” Keith asks.

Lance fixes Keith with a deadpan stare. “You wanna tell the story?”

Keith raises his arms in surrender.

“Well, the point is, I was being a jerk because I maybe admire you or whatever, and that’s not fair and I’m sorry, but I actually kind of had fun when we were fighting sometimes.” Lance scratches the back of his neck bashfully, blushing.

Keith smiles. “I did too.” He hesitates, before saying, “I think maybe we weren’t always really… fighting.”

Lance looks at him quizzically. Keith glances away quickly. “Never mind.”

“Wait, what?” Lance leans forward, close to Keith’s face. “Were you going to say something?”

“No, I wasn’t.” Keith invests every last sliver of energy into straining against the blush creeping into his face.

“Yes, you were,” Lance is grinning now. “What is it? You have to tell me now. Sorry. Those are the rules.”

“What rules?”

“Just tell me!”

“No.”

“Oh, come on! Come on, Keith! Tell me! Spit it out! Let slip! Break the news!”

“Fine!” Keith runs a hand through his hair. “All I was going to say is that because we like, don’t not like each other or whatever, then maybe we weren’t always fighting, maybe we were, I don’t know, playing around? I don’t know. Because I had fun fighting too, and I like you, so there.” Keith sits back, crossing his arms and turning his head away slightly.

Lance cocks his head to the side. “Then what were we doing? But wait, wait wait wait wait, you said that we don’t not like each other, then you said you like me, which is the same thing? Is that the same thing?” Lance tries to look at Keith, but the other boy has turned his head away from him now, allowing a wall of hair to fall in front of his eyes.

“Keith?” Lance prods a finger into Keith’s shoulder. “Why… You’re all… I’m so confused.”

Lance sees an unmistakeable tinge of red through the barrier of Keith’s hair. He frowns. Then he gasps. “Unless…” A wicked grin slinks across his face. “Keith, do you _like_ like me?”

“What?” Keith exclaims, burying his face into his shoulder on the opposite side of Lance. “Of course not.”

Lance is beaming now. “Yes, you do. You _like_ me.”

“No, I really don’t!” Keith huffs, folding his arms tighter across his chest.

“Oh my God, you are lying. You _so_ do,” Lance giggles furiously. “You spend one day little child Lance and suddenly you’re in love with me. Is it just me, or is that a little bit…” Lance is cut off as Keith’s head swivels suddenly to reveal a crimson coloured face and a glare saturated with venom and directed at him.

Lance erupts with laughter. Keith continues to glower viciously, cursing the enchanting sound under his breath. Lance’s giggling subsides with a sigh and he falls silent. Keith looks away.

He doesn’t know how long they sit there, him staring sombrely at the table and Lance staring at him. It feels as though all of time has been condensed into one moment and dropped heavily upon them. It takes a while for Keith to realise that he’s not breathing, a while longer for him to force his lungs to recollect the movement of breath, and a while more than that for him to force his screaming brain to command regulated inhalations.

All this time, Lance is quiet.

Keith doesn’t know if Lance is still staring at him. He wants to know, wants to see Lance’s expression at this moment. But he cannot tear his gaze away from the table. He cannot move at all. He wonders how long he has been still. He wonders if anyone has ever been this still for this long. He doesn’t think so.

Then,

“Keith,” Lance’s voice is laced with a soft kind of hush. Keith has to glance at him to ensure that it was his Lance who had spoken, not the child.

Lance was right. The kid _is_ still alive.  

“Keith, I, uh… um, uh. I, I like you too.” Lance’s eyes are big with revelations. He had been staring at his hands, but now he glances at Keith. Keith’s mouth dangles open, the way he’s watched Lance’s dangle so many times.

“You… do?”

“Yeah,” Lance frowns, but he’s nodding. He gazes at Keith’s still limp jaw and blinks. “You, uh… You did mean like, _like_ like, didn’t you?”

Keith snaps his mouth shut and swallows, nodding. “Mhm.”

Lance sighs. “Good.”

“Good,” Keith repeats. He glances at Lance’s unfurled hands in his lap. “Figuring some things out just now, huh?” He smirks.

Lance blinks, then pouts. “Hey, for your information, _Keith_ , I am in touch with my emotions just fine, thank you very much!”

“Denial is a nice place to live,” Keith chides, snickering. “A nice place full of blissful idiots.”

“Who are you calling an idiot, Mr. I Spent A Day With The Guy I Like Without Realising It Was Him?”

Keith flushes, then chuckles. “So,” he says, stretching his hand out before him. “You like the gloves, huh?”

Lance opens his mouth and grows very still, cheeks burning red. He scowls. “Stupid cool gloves, don’t even have any stupid fingers, what good is that. What a dumb thing to look cool in,” he mutters almost to himself.

Keith laughs. “You wanna try them on?”

Lance’s body freezes. He peers at Keith as though he’d just offered to saw off his own arm and give it to Lance as a spare.

Keith raises his eyebrows, grinning. He unfastens the gloves and lays them on the table. For a while, Lance just gapes at Keith’s bare hands, then at the discarded gloves. Slowly, he reaches for them, gingerly lifting one off the table. He grins to himself, shaking his head, then pulls them on quickly, wriggling his fingers through the holes and clasping them tightly around his wrist. He holds his hands outstretched before his eyes. He watches fixatedly as he twists his hands and flexes his fingers, the side of his mouth curling upwards. His eyes blaze as he clenches his hands into fists and throws a few punches into the air, grinning madly. Keith smiles.

“I mean,” Lance mumbles, blushing. “They’re alright. I still don’t _get it,_ why they’re _so cool_ or whatever.” He takes the gloves off almost hastily and hands them back to Keith.

“Sure,” Keith rolls his eyes, tugging the gloves back on. His head perks up suddenly, and he glances at Lance slyly. “So, you let your sister paint your nails?”

The colour drains from Lance’s face. “What? No! Who tol –” Lance pauses. “Oh.”

“I – I think it’s nice,” Keith says between attempts to smother his laughter at the look on Lance’s face.

Lance scowls. “Only ever when she _forced_ me to!”

“I don’t know why you’re being defensive, I never said –” Keith stops. “Wait, it happened more than once?”

Lance’s ears grow pink. “N… No!” He crosses his arms tightly and frowns at his lap.

Keith leans forward, smiling. “What colour?”

Lance huffs with indignation, his cheeks flaming.

Keith tries to supress his laughter, he really does. “Did – did you use sparkles?”

Lance glares.

“And listen to Taylor Swift?”

“No!”

“Right,” Keith nods. “Hannah Montana, then.”

Lance’s eyes narrow, his lip sticking out. Keith barks with laughter, wrapping an arm around his stomach and planting a hand on Lance’s shoulder. Lance’s eyes are suddenly wide again, and Keith stops laughing. He peers into Lance’s eyes – a crystallized evening sky.

And he leans forward.

Lance’s lips are warm, and they melt onto his.

Keith raises his hand to graze Lance’s cheek with his fingertips and feels a hand flush against the back of his neck. He wonders if Lance can feel his goose bumps.

The kiss turns into a second, then a third, then a fourth.

Finally their lips part and they pant slightly, breathing the same air. Keith’s hand sliding to cup the side of Lance’s face. They lift their eyes slowly and their gazes entwine. They laugh softly into each other’s mouths, their cheeks the same shade of red.

“Does this mean I can paint your nails too?”

“Oh my God!”

 

**

 

Weeks later, in the middle of the night, Keith’s eyes fly open.

He jolts forwards into a sitting position, the blanket falling off his bare chest and the mattress creaking softly. His legs sprawl before him and his hands clutch the sheets tightly.

“H, huh?” Lance stirs. He looks up at Keith gasping for breath, and flings the blanket aside wildly.

“What? What is it?” The grogginess in Lance’s voice is smothered by concern as he scrambles to sit up beside Keith.

Keith pants, his head hanging loosely, his wide eyes hidden by the hair splaying in front of his face. Lance watches his shoulders rise and fall, eyebrows knitting together. His hand rests on Keith’s heaving back.

“Keith, babe, what’s wrong?” Lance’s rubs circles into Keith’s skin soothingly, his eyes searching. “What’s going on?”

Keith exhales deeply. He lifts his eyes to meet Lance’s.

Lance’s brow creases. “What?”

Keith breathes a ghost of a chuckle, a devilish grin creeping across his face.

“I just remembered something.”

“Wha –” Lance pauses at Keith’s diabolical grin. “Keith?”

Keith thinks his face might split if he smiled any wider. “Your favourite movie is The Notebook?”

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, if you made it this far, thank you so much!!!!!  
> Please leave a comment - let me know what you thought. I feel like this definitely isn't my best, but tell me what you think!!!   
> This is my first finished fanfic for this fandom - I'm working on another one at the moment - but it's a slow process. (The next one is better, I think!)   
> I just love the idea of Keith meeting little Lance. I think it's an interesting concept and I had fun exploring it a bit :) Little Lance was so much fun to write. Aaagh I love him!!   
> But leave a comment - criticism, constructive (or not). My tumblr is aurora-sapientia15 if you wanna chat or send me hate mail that's cool. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!!!!


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